President Donald Trump's Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, is facing a staffing crisis as not only are seasoned civil rights lawyers exiting in droves — she is unable to attract viable candidates to fill vacancies.
It follows a mass revolt of staff at the civil rights division over a refusal to investigate the fatal shooting in Minneapolis of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross. The matter was simply handed off to the U.S. attorney's office, and state and local officials are not being allowed to participate.
According to The Washington Post, "Dhillon has ... said that her office is being flooded with applicants to fill vacant roles. But people familiar with the division said that just a fraction of the open roles have been filled, a process impeded by a lack of qualified candidates and bureaucratic delays. Some of the sections within the division are so understaffed that they cannot effectively complete their workloads."
Vanita Gupta, who ran the civil rights division in the Barack Obama administration, had a grim assessment.
“This exodus is a huge blow signaling the disrespect and sidelining of the finest and most experienced civil rights prosecutors,” she told The Post. “It means cases won’t be brought, unique expertise will be lost, and the top career attorneys who may be a backstop to some of the worst impulses of this administration will have left.”
Dhillon, who previously represented California in the Republican National Committee, has rapidly become a controversial figure. Last month, she suggested that the DOJ won't honor the statute of limitations in criminally probing people who investigated the January 6 attack, then potentially violated the First Amendment rights of lawyers criticizing her.